River Wards news in brief for the week of August 21

Douglas High School to re-open as a charter; maimed cats found in Port Rich­mond, and more news in brief.

Mari­time Academy to op­er­ate out of Douglas build­ing

This Septem­ber, Mari­time Academy Charter School will be­gin send­ing its high school stu­dents to the re­cently closed Steph­en A. Douglas High School, loc­ated at Ara­mingo Av­en­ue and Hunt­ing­don Street in Port Rich­mond, ac­cord­ing to Mari­time Academy’s news­let­ter.

The Academy’s Ju­ly news­let­ter an­nounced that the school had ne­go­ti­ated a lease with the School Dis­trict of Phil­adelphia to use the Douglas build­ing. Douglas will now be­come the loc­a­tion of the Mari­time Academy Charter High School in the 2013-14 school year.

With this move, Mari­time Academy will split in­to two build­ings, send­ing its high school stu­dents to the former Douglas school in Port Rich­mond, while keep­ing middle school stu­dents in Brides­burg.

Mari­time Academy will of­fer stu­dents shuttle bus ser­vice to the new high school loc­a­tion.

Mari­time Academy Charter is set to be­gin classes for all grades on Wed­nes­day, Sept. 4. ••

Maimed cats found in Port Rich­mond

Jan­elle Dougherty, a Port Rich­mond wo­man, re­cently found a pair of Rus­si­an Blue kit­tens in the Port Rich­mond Vil­lage shop­ping cen­ter on Ara­mingo Av­en­ue, both with one paw cut off, the Phil­adelphia Daily News re­por­ted.

The two four-week-old kit­tens were found last week in a di­aper box near a trash bin by Dougherty’s bark­ing dog.

Dougherty told the Daily News that the paws looked like they were cut off by a non-ser­rated tool.

The cats were treated by veter­in­ari­ans for de­hyd­ra­tion, in­fec­tion and star­va­tion.

Dougherty has since ad­op­ted the kit­tens.

A Pennsylvania So­ci­ety for Pre­ven­tion of Cruelty to An­im­als (PSPCA) em­ploy­ee told Star there were no new re­ports of maimed cats be­ing found, and no new in­form­a­tion re­gard­ing the per­son who dis­figured the two cats.

Any­one with in­form­a­tion is be­ing asked to con­tact the PSPCA hot­line at 866-601-SPCA (7722). ••

Of­ficer who punched wo­man re­hired

Lt. Jonath­an Jo­sey was re­cently re­in­stated and ordered to be paid full back-pay since he was fired over strik­ing a wo­man dur­ing a Pu­erto Ric­an Day block party in Kens­ing­ton on Sept. 30, 2012, the Phil­adelphia In­quirer re­por­ted.

Jo­sey was ac­quit­ted of as­sault charges for the in­cid­ent on Feb. 26.

The city’s Pu­erto Ric­an com­munity re­acted to the ac­quit­tal with out­rage, and May­or Mi­chael Nut­ter and Phil­adelphia Po­lice De­part­ment Com­mis­sion­er Charles Ram­say both con­demned the ver­dict.

However, with the crim­in­al tri­al over, the Fraternal Or­der of Po­lice (F.O.P.) Lodge #5’s griev­ance to get Jo­sey re­in­stated went ahead to an ar­bit­rage hear­ing.

“He ac­ted with­in the use of force guidelines,” F.O.P. vice-pres­id­ent John Mc­Grody told Star in de­fense of Jo­sey’s con­duct after the ac­quit­tal.

Cell-phone video that went vir­al on­line showed Jo­sey strik­ing Aida Guz­man, of Chester, in the face, caus­ing her to fall seated to the street.

Jo­sey’s de­fense at­tor­ney at tri­al claimed that he struck Guz­man by ac­ci­dent while try­ing to take a beer bottle from her hand, as oth­er spec­tat­ors threw wa­ter on of­ficers deal­ing with a driver who had driv­en in­to a crowd of people dur­ing a block party at 5th Street and Le­high Av­en­ue.

May­or Nut­ter dis­agreed, stat­ing, “Any­one could see that the of­ficer punched the lady in the face in a cer­tainly pur­pose­ful fash­ion,” through his spokes­man Mark Mc­Don­ald.

Guz­man filed a fed­er­al law­suit against the city and ac­cep­ted a $75,000 set­tle­ment. ••